May the Best Man or Woman Win

An old teacher of mine used to claim he graded our papers
by throwing them all up the stairs and giving A's to the ones
that landed on the top step. Now, there was a case of someone
treating every student equally.

Although this example is obvious reductio ad absurdum,
it serves to demonstrate an important point: Equal is not necessarily
fair. That principle is worth reiterating in any discussion
of affirmative action in college admissions, which often boils
down to a controversy over fairness. While people may argue
that everyone should be treated exactly the same, the truth
is that we all favor some sorts of criteria. The ethical trick
is to make those criteria morally relevant.

If you think this is an easy matter, consider legacy admissions
young people who get into a school because their parents are
alums. According to a report from U.C.-Berkeley's Institute
for the Study of Social Change issued in 1991, more legacy students
were admitted to 10 of the country's most elite institutions
than the combined number of all African Americans and Chicanos
admitted under affirmative action programs.

Many people defend legacy admissions as acceptable because
they help to ensure the financial continuity of the institution,
without which no one would be able to enter the university.
But such a rationale can be a slippery slope. Indeed, the hypocrisy
tweakers had a field day recently when the Los Angeles Times
reported that several of the U.C. regents who had voted to abolish
affirmative action had themselves pulled strings to get relatives,
friends, and the children of business associates into UCLA.

Morally Relevant Criteria
My point here is not so much to challenge the moral relevance
of this particular preference, but to point out that race is
only one among many possible attributes we might take into account
in admission decisions. If, ultimately, we want to disallow
it as a basis for preference, we should be prepared to justify
why it is any less worthy than other characteristics we do consider.

One justifiable criterion might be ability: May the best man
or woman win. While there may be general agreement on the relevance
of this determinant, there is much less agreement on a fair
way to measure it. On the surface, it might seem logical that
the people with the best grades and scores should get the college
slots. Indeed, this argument is at the heart of several cases,
such as Bakke vs. Regents of the University of California,
which have challenged affirmative action in the courts.

Although we might conclude that grades and scores are the
most objective criteria we can come up with to assess ability,
there are more than a few reasons to question our moral certainty
about the justice of this system. First, standards of grading
vary enormously from school to school; an A from one might be
a C from another. Such variability was behind the creation of
standardized tests like the SATs, which were supposed to provide
a single measure for students across the country.

But these tests have been accused repeatedly of bias against
minorities. In 1990, a national commission sponsored by the
Ford Foundation found that the differences in test scores between
minority and majority test takers were typically larger than
the differences in their grades or job ratings. "We must stop
pretending that any single standard test can illuminate equally
well the talents and help promote the learning of people from
dramatically different backgrounds," their report concluded.

Flutists and Football Players
While academic ability is hard to measure fairly, most people
still want to include that factor in college admissions. But
it is not, by far, the only characteristic that might be considered.
A long-established criterion has been diversity. By this, I
don't mean only the relatively new argument that student bodies
should reflect the multiethnic society from which they are drawn;
I mean the old practice of creating a freshman class that has
a much-needed linebacker, a new first flute for the university
orchestra, and a high-school senior-class president who may
go on to a leadership position in college student government.

Athletic prowess, musical talent, and unusual community service
have all been defended as morally acceptable considerations
for college admissions because they add to the well-roundedness
of the student body. If these attributes can be considered relevant
to admissions, why not race?

Of course, there is nothing inherently edifying about attending
school with people who have different physical attributes. Introducing
more redheads into a student population would bring about no
discernible benefit. But, in this country, having a different
skin color means having a different life experience. Bringing
that difference into the mix at our universities can greatly
enhance the quality of the dialogue that goes on there.

On the larger stage, our society is enriched by the many different
backgrounds and traditions of its members. For example, as a
woman, I know I benefit from the increasing numbers of female
health practitioners, who have brought women's health issues
such as breast cancer to the fore-front of national consciousness.
It does not surprise or even anger me that male doctors did
not pursue these issues more forcefully  they lie outside
menÕs personal experience  but I do want my experience
to be represented.

Similarly, I have to confront the needs and perspectives of
other members of my community, which I might ignore, however
unwittingly, were they not represented in our universities and
in the larger public discussion.

The views expressed on this site are the author's. The
Markkula Center for Applied Ethics does not advocate particular positions
but seeks to encourage dialogue on the ethical dimensions of current
issues. The Center welcomes comments
and alternative points of view.